Friday, August 28, 2015

Reflections of late August: 1919’s Red Summer

The Lynching of Will Brown, Omaha, Nebraska. 1919

Woodrow Wilson, five months into his presidency and after having
run on an anti-war platform, plunged America into the great catastrophe of
World War I. Different historical narratives exist regarding that decision.
Wilson eventually mustered 4,800,000 US soldiers into service, 2,800,000 of
them by draft, after a nationwide campaign undertaken with a new public
propaganda tool, the Committee on Public Information, created by Wilson with
the help of journalist George Creel.

One effect of the war was a shortage of labor in the
industrial north of the United States. A great migration of southern blacks
took place to the large cities of the north to fill jobs on the railroads and
in factories. At the end of the war, amidst a mass demobilization of US troops
and a reduction in armaments manufacturing, came unemployment. What had been a
shortage of labor was now a surplus. Coincident with these events were the
Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, which had taken place in 1917, and new black
civil rights activism in the US in the wake of Marcus Garvey, the 10-year-old
NAACP and other organizations and the new prominence of important black
intellectuals, artists and writers of the Harlem Renaissance.

Many politicians and newspapers treated activists as
enemies of the state by conflating the emergent black civil rights movement
with Bolshevism. The New York Times was amongst the worst offenders with a July
28, 1919 headline titled “REDS TRY TO STIR NEGROES TO REVOLT; Widespread
Propaganda on Foot Urging Them to Join I.W.W. and 'Left Wing' Socialists.”

At the end of the war, suspicion of an ascendant Germany was being replaced by
the “red scare.” While politicians, carnival barkers and reckless newspaper
media promoted this hysteria, tensions were breaking out between whites and
blacks as black communities were placed in a state of siege by mob attacks on
the part of jobless whites, Klan members and their sympathizers. From opened
archives we know that Woodrow Wilson in private conversation, stated, “the
American Negro returning from abroad would be our greatest medium in conveying
bolshevism to America,” a direct reference to men who had just served their
country in the deadliest war of the modern era. (See Cameron McWhirter, Red
Summer).
It can also be noted that this was the era of the racist, pro-KKK film
"Birth of a Nation" by Wilson's friend and cinematographer, D.W.
Griffith. Wilson invited his cabinet and close friends to the White House for a
private screening of the film.

In the summer of 1919 riots broke out with white mobs
attacking blacks, but unlike past eras, many blacks resisted and fought back.
Even in Washington DC, where President Wilson maintained racially segregated
federal offices, violence erupted after repeated attacks on black homes,
against individuals on streetcars, and in workplaces elsewhere in the city. The
DC Police refused to intervene. The NAACP sent a telegram to President Wilson,
condemning the attacks and urging intervention. As the attacks went unabated,
riots broke out.

Lynching would go on for a number of years. The Red Scare
would continue. Newspapers, the mass media of the day, would continue to carry
water for those promoting hysteria and attacking the labor and civil rights
movements, while brave souls of American history forged new paths.

"She says, You can’t repeat the past. I say, You
can’t? What do you mean, you can’t? Of course you can.'” - Bob Dylan, Summer
Days.